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archives: july 2011
seeing beyond the crowd
by mike pilavachi
A few years ago a friend of mine sat me down and shattered any remaining illusions I had that I was still young. 'Mike,' he said with a comforting pat on the shoulder, 'you're not as young as you used to be. You need to start conserving your energy.'
While I tried to plaster a convincing smile to my face and gather the shreds of my ego, he continued, 'You don't seem to have a strategy for what meetings you speak at; where you go and who you see is all disconnected. Shouldn't you be a bit more strategic and start saying no to engagements where there are less than 500 people? What you need to focus your time and energy on are the people with power and influence. Go and speak to the leaders and shapers of this generation, because they are the people you need to catch if you want to have the widest impact.'
And for a few minutes that made sense to me. Maybe I had been a bit haphazard in where I went. Maybe I needed to think a bit more about the people I was reaching. After all, I want as many people as possible to know about Jesus.
But then it got me thinking: why didn't anyone tell Jesus to be more strategic in who He hung around with? Poor Jesus! Take the disciples as an example: what a strange lot they were and He chose them all to be His closest friends. Made up of a bunch of fishermen, two guys with short tempers (James and John earned their nickname of 'Sons of Thunder'), a tax collector, a zealot (who was revolutionary) and to top it all off there was Judas! Forgive me for saying it, but they were hardly the 'in crowd’.
Jesus obviously hadn't heard the latest theories on catching the leaders. He just went to any old person, with little consideration of their power and status. And, if we're honest, the people He prioritised and went to first were all the wrong people. Hardly a leader or influential celebrity among them – in fact they were more like the anti-movers and shakers, the lowest of the low. Some of the people He chose to hang out with were the kind of people that no one noticed except perhaps to scorn and avoid. Jesus only took on the powers at Jerusalem much later, after He'd spent time with the others.
In the church we've always wanted a crowd – we've wondered how to draw the maximum number of people into our services and festivals, mistaking numbers as a sign that what we're doing has the power and authority of heaven. But it doesn't sound as if Jesus had a problem attracting a crowd – there's no record at the Sermon on the Mount of His disciples counting the crowd and asking Jesus whether there were enough people for Him to bother, or if He'd like to postpone till they could get more people. He didn't say, 'I'm not doing a miracle for just 5,000. Get me a crowd of 50,000 and I'll show you how to have a feast with a few loaves and fishes.' Whereas we're obsessed with trying to build a crowd, Jesus was usually trying to escape one. So many times we read that a crowd had gathered and, rather than getting excited, Jesus got into a boat and rowed off or went up a mountain to pray all night alone. He did not seem to care about the strategies my friend was telling me to employ.
When Jesus passed through Jericho He didn't seek out the person we might have expected in order to unlock the hearts and minds of the rest of the town for Him. We would probably have picked someone with power and influence, but not Jesus. He knew that the guy He needed to speak to was the short bloke to be found halfway up a tree. 'Hey, Zac! I have to come to your house tonight,' He calls. If you picture the scene, you can imagine the stir it caused. The Bible even highlights how unpopular a move this was when the people grumbled, 'Doesn't He know Zacchaeus is the chief tax collector?' In those days a tax collector was not a civil servant as we know them today (though some would say this would have been reason enough to avoid him), but his job actually made him a traitor to Israel. Zacchaeus spent his days collecting on behalf of the occupying Roman authority and stealing from his own people, making himself very rich in the process. He would have been despised, a social outcast, and yet he was the one Jesus picked out to have dinner with.
I have to say that for a number of years the parable of the lost sheep in Luke 15 caused me some confusion. I thought that when the shepherd left the 99 to go in search of the missing one, he would have paid due care and attention and locked up the 99 in a safe and secure pen with at least two other shepherds on duty to look after them while he went off. I don't pretend to know much about shepherding, but that would have made sense to me. But if that were the case, there would be no point to the story. No, this particular shepherd left the 99 sheep still in his possession on the side of a hill where they were bound to wander off and get lost themselves. So when Jesus told this story, everyone listening would have thought, 'What a weird shepherd. He's rejoicing because he found the one sheep that he lost, but he must be really stupid not to realise that he lost 99 to do it.' Then Jesus hits them with the punchline: God is like that shepherd.
The point of the story that I had so often missed is not that God doesn't protect His own, but that He sees individuals. He wants to be involved, to have them know the intimate care with which He looks over them. Each individual person matters to Him and that's the main point of the parable.
Jesus had a strategy, but it wasn't motivated by a need to speak to big crowds or to get His message as far and wide as possible. His strategy was to love. He cared for and had compassion on individuals. Now that's a strategy worth making our own.
Of course we pray and long for lots of people to know Jesus, but rather than seeing a mass of people waiting to be converted we need to see with Jesus' eyes; to see people one at a time and their own particular needs.
About the author
Mike is an old, old man. He heads up all things Soul Survivor, gets excited about cooking, Manchester United and seeing people come to know and grow in a relationship with Jesus.
Soul Survivor is a Christian charity that puts on events for young people. Our registered charity no. is 1080720. We are also a company limited by guarantee in England & Wales. Our company registered number is 03991111, which is nice. Thanks for caring.
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